What I Saw
by Thyme In Her Eyes
Summary: Charlotte's perspective after she catches Abbe's rejection of Madeline as well as her own dark thoughts and reflections on Charenton and sin.


What I Saw  
  
Ack, my first bash at 'Quills' fanfiction...I adore that film, it got to me (probably because it was so unpredictable). So I thought I'd start off by writing something kinda original - as much as I'd like to do a 'fic about Madeline and Abbé sometime it's been done before many, many times. This takes place around the time Madeline 'visits' Abbé in the night but he rejects her, only this time told from Charlotte's point of view/her general view on her life. She does sound like she's losing it but, in 'Quills' just about everybody's losing it so why not Charlotte too? A very odd look into her mind, I figured she'd either be half-mad or an evil, conniving bitch ^_^   
BTW - The view given on Madeline here is NOT my view of her (I love poor Maddy to bits) but it's just my guess at how Charlotte might see her.   
Enjoy!   
Oh yeah, please review!   
  
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What I Saw  
  
I'm walking because I'm afraid.  
  
Afraid of the shadows that haunt me, the resting evil in my room, if I walk I can distract myself from them, from what they can do. This place is getting more evil and wrong by the minute - I can feel it. I feel it every day. Everyone's getting drawn into this, into the intimidating darkness of Charenton.   
  
Darkness and shadow shrouded the long curving corridors of the asylum, my workplace, my home. The ancient-seeming halls glare at me, the flickering light whispering, the stirring spiders creeping and the rounded corridors themselves leering at me, not quite showing what was around the corner but showing enough to raise some curiosity. To tempt me into wondering even further down into the pit of perfidy. This isn't how a workplace should be - a workplace should be lifeless, soulless, completely detached from the imagination so people like me can be professional and concentrate only on work. This place is so wrong as it is, who needs more imagination in a building full of lunatics inside and outside cold cells? No, this place used to not be so bad but since all that horrid business with Madeline it's gone darker, more intimidating - I half expect some unholy madman to jump out of these shadows now and drag me back into an early grave.   
  
Everyone's creeping about at night, thinking bad things, doing bad things. I don't know if it's these lunatics, these devils of the pit or something much worse. The people who aren't in cells, the ones that walk like free men, hurting people, wronging them. There are plenty here and it's wrong. It oughtn't be like this. At night the dust stirs slowly like a walking skeleton, shuffling through the blackened halls, prowling through the night. It frightens me. The thought of bad monsters or people, or lunatics or sins will come and get me and drink the soul out of my body in the dark of the night. That all my demons will find me and take me over. The demons that haunt everyone here. This place is wicked, it should be burnt to the ground, then our souls will be safe and lurking ghosts won't haunt me in my nightmares.  
  
Or whilst I'm awake either.   
  
Just think...no more darkness, no more sinful Madeline, no more madmen, no more hauntings, no more bugs crawling, no more shadows. Heaven. Utopia. Perfection instead of perfidy. All these bad, mad people will be cured or committed the right way and proper people that respect their job, like me will work here. Someone will recognise my abilities and give me a better position. I'll show them all. All the life and feeling will go away and it won't be a shadowy demonic place anymore but just another building. A cold building made only of bricks. I'll get there one day, things will change and I won't be frightened and disturbed by all the darkness and sin that everyone creates. Because there won't be any. All the bad people will be sent away and the worse will be locked away. And I'll be safe from the dark forces of madness. It'll happen when I'm chaste, I must be suffering now because I'm bad and I don't want to be a wicked thing.  
  
I can't sleep anymore, the sounds in the dark of serpents whispering and mice creeping on their tiny feet, the howls of our 'patients' and the plotting of those in power. It isn't safe anymore - everyone's whispering, conspiring, doing bad, bad things that they oughtn't do. No, they oughtn't do those things because God says so.   
  
But they did those things and all the sunlight went from these halls. It turned into a dark, frightening place. The corridors aren't the same anymore, there's sin everywhere, swallowing up everyone bringing them into darkness. Everyone here stinks of it. But these halls stink the most The shadows all loom over me, threatening me, tempting me, torturing me. Gluttony, greed, lust, pride, sloth, wrath and envy all live here, in the shadows, all reaching out their bony, black fingers to try and bring me into their world, kicking and screaming all the way. They want to strip me naked, fondle my body with their filthy hands and long tongues and cut me and soak me in my own blood. I can feel it. Everything here frightens me now, the darkness, the shadow, the cobwebs, the strange sounds at night, the sin. How everyone seems to be losing control in an unholy, detestable environment, making respectable people the Devil's minions.   
  
I hate it here.  
  
But here they do them, this is where people lose their minds and souls, where all of God's little mistakes are. Day and night they live in their sin and we look after them and try to keep looking, keep checking the state of our own souls so they don't get dirty. Not like them.   
  
I hate them.   
  
I only wanted some money, a way to live, like all the other washer-women here It seemed fair, besides here they helped people get better, get clean from the stains on their minds - it seemed right. But no, I remember a priest telling me that sin breeds sin. But I was careful. I always hated those disgusting THINGS that were supposed to be people, so I didn't get involved, I waited, waited for things to change, for a time when these sinners would be cured properly. The Abbé tries, I think but he's caught up in all of this, I can smell it. I can smell it on everyone here, all reading those filthy books we oughtn't be reading, like it was a joke instead of something unholy and horrible. And breaking all our rules - I don't break rules, why should anyone else? They're all there for a reason, but some people have to silly things, have to break every rule in the book, has to be a wicked thing that God'll send to hell. Like Madeline opening the door for the Marquis and letting him out - something's going on there...I know that. Why does she do those bad things? It'll only bring more bad things, ever since she came here, she's been bringing bad things to all of us, knock after knock of her sins, the little witch! The whore!   
  
She used to be pure and virtuous like me, a good girl that only wanted some money to survive and take care of her family. This place, this evil changed her. Soon she started having ideas of her own and thinking, planning. And she speaks of things it isn't right to speak of, I can't read so I don't know much about the Holy Book, but I've been taught what's godly and what's not and who the saints are and who the sinners are. And I know that what Madeline is doing is wrong, consorting with madmen, fooling with our dear Abbé. That's how it is with all the pretty things, more corrupt than Jezebel. If only she paid as much attention to the state of her soul as she did to the state of her pretty little face. Now she's the bad one, the black sheep in our flock, I saw her open that door, I saw her, and if she's not a careful girl she'll burn in hell for her sins, and the sins she brought upon the rest of us too. She's the one that started all this sin here, cursed us all with her bad, made us unclean, just like Eve.   
  
But I didn't say anything; I let her pay for her crime, like she should, like all people should. It might've hurt her, but it's better than hell with the fire and pain and gnashing of teeth - after all, she's the bad one, the one that started all this with the Marquis, turning everyone here into characters from his horrible books. And she gets away with it; she gets away with her crime because she corrupted Abbé with her pretty face and ripe body! I know she did. She laughs too, whilst sharing her body with several different men and the Devil himself, I'll bet on that. All the men give her - the corrupt whore, all their attention and leave the good, pure, sinless women like me on the shelf like an unwanted rag doll. Women like me suffer because she flaunts her full breasts in the face of every man she sees regardless of whether he's a priest or a lunatic!  
  
Has she no shame?   
  
Will an eternity in Hell as the Devil's concubine bring her shame?  
  
It must, for if she feels shame I can forgive her.  
  
I can forgive her for being a filthy whore and show her the light of my own virtue.  
  
She will finally see how superior I am to her.   
  
I walk a little faster, with a little spring in my step at that thought, savouring it with an almost unholy pleasure. She's a bad, wicked thing and I'm a perfect, good girl. But who should I see run in front of me bounding like a wild thing down the smooth granite halls to her own room with tear-filled eyes but Madeline! She doesn't have my troubles - why is she out of her room so late? I avert my eyes to the running crying figure and continue to walk my own calculated pace, my eyes darting to the ceiling and the curves of the stone walls, what evil have they done now?  
  
"Madeline!" a fiercely passionate whisper charged with love and thick with emotion shatters the silence around me.   
  
The Abbé's voice.   
  
From his bedchamber!   
  
Calling her back to him!  
  
I turn slowly to face him, to confirm or deny my suspicion about the two of them...living in sin. He isn't properly dressed. His eyes go wide in shock and horror with the realisation of his mistake as if I was some disgusting monster. He stumbles back, in shame, hoping I didn't notice - does he think I'm an idiot? I noticed. I know what's going on between the two of them. I send him a look - a dark, condescending look to let him know that I saw. I know. I send him conflict in one look, in my smouldering eyes.   
  
I know their little secret.   
  
But I do nothing. I let him stumble back in silent fear, knowing that I saw his little indiscretion, that he'll keep my fixed gaze that focused so painfully tight on him to the grave. Madeline doesn't know he wanted her back, that he was going to invite her into his bed, but I do. I know.  
  
I can't erase what I saw.   
  
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So what does everyone think? Strange little thing isn't it? I'm not sure how I feel about it, maybe I'll take it down and revise it for later - any thoughts on this? Comments? Crits? Anything?  
Anyway, bye and thanks for your patience! ^_^ 


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